


In Good Hands

by prettycloud



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Demisexuality, M/M, Mutual Pining, Touch-Starved, fast slow burn, if that makes sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 18:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettycloud/pseuds/prettycloud
Summary: "For months, I merely registered an unnamed discomfort at the idea of clapping him on the shoulder or fixing his tie. As our friendship deepened, I realized that without knowing it, I had been guarding myself from acting out my growing love for the man."Holmes shows his affection through touch (until one day he doesn’t). Watson doesn't know what to make of it (until one day he does).
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	In Good Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: weight gain mention, minor mention of shame around disability

W

During the first month or so of our acquaintance, my new flatmate struck me as an aloof sort of person. Though his strong features and obscure occupation intrigued me, Holmes hardly seemed to reciprocate my interest. He seldom spoke to me, except out of necessity and to make unasked-for comments about my background or mood. 

Then, one day, after I thoroughly insulted one of his monographs over breakfast (quite by accident, of course), he invited me to join him in solving a mystery that had puzzled the police. It puzzled me too, and yet Holmes seemed to get something out of having me along. After that, it seemed as if he had finally taken notice of me—whom he had shared lodgings with for a month! He would offer me a cigarette after dinner, catch my eye when a client said something interesting, and—you must understand, never in an untoward way—he touched me all the time.

It was glorious. Whenever we were out walking, he would link my arm in his as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He was always there to help me in and out of cabs, acknowledging my still-healing leg and shoulder by his actions but never saying a word that would embarrass me. And—especially in private—he would constantly touch me during conversation, grabbing my arm as he laughed at something funny I had said (intentionally or not) or reaching across from his armchair to touch my knee in sympathy.

I am not averse to touching others, but I never knew how to go about it with Holmes, for the simple fact that I loved him. Not at first, mind you, I’m not so easy as that. For months, I merely registered an unnamed discomfort at the idea of clapping him on the shoulder or fixing his tie. As our friendship deepened, I realized that without knowing it, I had been guarding myself from acting out my growing love for the man.

If only he could see me that way.

For, although he would throw an easy arm around my shoulders at the successful completion of a case, my friend remained as cold as ever to the notion of romance. Every other case saw Holmes complaining about the client’s weakness to sentiment. So though he might enjoy my company, I could not see him moved by the softer feelings that were growing within me.

H

It was after Watson responded so positively to the Lauriston case that I realised he may be depressed. Up until that point I had only known him in his post-military state, recovering from disease and the horrors of man’s violence against man. I had no baseline, and so assumed that this reserved attitude was normal for the doctor. As I saw Watson flourish in the adrenaline of the case, I realized that before he had simply been suffering from a lack of stimulation—a lack of problems to solve, danger to face, and friends to commune with. Not to mention the sudden physical lack of touch that must have been a stark change from the constant shoulder-slapping and mock-wrestling of military camaraderie.

I became determined to return this young and fetching doctor to his actual baseline—and never mind my motives. I would include him in all of my cases that might interest him, I would invite him out with me to see the great parks and performances of our proud city. And I would touch him as often as I could.

Perhaps if I were a different sort of fellow, I would not have felt the need to go to such lengths. I have known men who could change someone’s outlook on life with a few careful sentences. And I suppose I can have my way with words when it’s for a case. But when I try to speak well to people I admire, to speak genuinely and from the heart—well, I usually end up with my foot in my mouth. I could not rely on my bedside manner to heal the doctor, for I could not stop spouting inane facts about cigarette ash or criticizing his deduction skills whenever I so much as tried to say something nice to him.

Despite my foot-eating tendencies, we seemed to be getting along quite well solving crimes together and living our Bohemian bachelor lifestyle. Watson had gained back the weight he had lost to illness, and with it a wit and confidence I hadn’t before seen. I came to expect the twinkle in his eye as he made an astute observation or a good-natured joke (often at my expense, though I never begrudged him the satisfaction). He had even begun to take an interest in  _ my _ health, urging me to eat more and sleep at reasonable hours even during cases.

In fact, his concern for my wellbeing was to become the undoing of our easy little friendship.

* * *

It happened late at night in one of the nastier corners of the city—as many important events in our lives do. Watson and I were crouched against the wall of an alleyway, peering through the fog at our suspect across the street. I could hear the doctor’s breath by my shoulder. Perhaps we needn’t have hidden so close together, I reflected, dwelling on the heat that seemed to radiate off his body in the chill night. But I was getting distracted.

It seemed that our suspect had finished with his business and would soon be on his way. I touched Watson’s arm to alert him. The chase would soon begin.

It has been said many times (often by Watson) that I know every cobblestone of London like the back of my own hand. I circumnavigate the city often enough for that to approach fact. But on this particular night, as I began to run after our fleeing mark, I discovered a cobblestone I was unfamiliar with. Or rather, my shoe discovered the lack of a cobblestone where I was expecting one. 

Time stood still as my gut sank with dread and my body passed out of my control. And then my Watson was there, enveloping me in a full-body embrace that steadied me and yet left me even more unbalanced. Immediately upon noting that I had found my footing, he released me. But my body retained the warm safety of his embrace, the immediate calm of disaster averted.

But at what cost?

“All right, old chap?” he breathed, eyes darting to the retreating figure of our suspect—for, although the moment had seemed infinite, it had really been but a few seconds.

“Yes,” was all I could muster, but he hardly seemed to notice my hesitance as we took off in pursuit for the second time.

  
  


W

Since that night on Carr Street, Holmes had been different toward me. Case in point: his congratulations when the case was solved came from across the room. Of course I still cherished the twinkle in his eye as he poured us both a celebratory brandy, but something in me wilted as he handed me the drink at arm’s length rather than crowding into my space and clapping me on the shoulder.

To any casual observer, Holmes was enjoying our success and my company. But to me, who had grown used to his constant closeness, it felt like the worst sort of rejection. Had something in my grip been untoward? I had held him as I might have a fellow soldier, just long enough to steady him, hands confined to his shoulder and back. He could hardly have seen the hunger in my gaze that far from a streetlamp, and my body had had no time to react to his nearness. I had been a perfect gentleman, and yet it seemed that something in my manner had spooked him. Like a deer, he was bolting, though he kept a polite façade. And I had decided long ago not to play the role of the hunter.

With this in mind, I determined my course of action: absolutely no action at all. I would accept any scrap of affection he tossed my way, as I had done, and resign myself now to the impossibility of anything more. Perhaps he could learn to tolerate my inverted affection for him as I tolerated his noxious chemical experiments.

* * *

Of course my resolve was tested the following evening. We had been enjoying postprandial cigars in the sitting room, I at my writing desk tidying up a manuscript and he deep in thought on the settee. He still had not touched me since the incident, but the evening felt like a respite from his studied avoidance of me: we shared the room with a sort of easy camaraderie even as we engaged in different tasks. And then he stood up, as if electrified, and, bidding me a good evening, quit the flat.

Holmes had left me out of cases before, when my health was not up to it or when he felt the matter was too trifling for my notice. But of course this instance unsettled me. Now vigilant for any action that telegraphed rejection, I could not help but dwell on my flatmate’s abrupt departure as a sign that he was withdrawing himself from me even further. 

All I wanted was to ask him to come back to me, but I knew this would only make things worse. He would read my eagerness as a threat, as so many do when confronted with the affections of an invert. But I could not stand by while he separated himself from me.

I made a strong cup of tea. If I should happen to be awake when Holmes returned—well, it would not be pushing him to simply enquire as to his whereabouts and the details of his new case.

H

When Watson had sat before his manuscript, I sank onto the settee in relief. At last I could be in his presence without him paying me too much mind. 

I had not been held in a close embrace since university half a decade ago, and up until the incident I hadn’t minded in the slightest. Now, I minded very much. It had been nearly two days since Watson had kept me from falling, and my every waking moment was filled with the dear, dreadful memory of his body against mine and his strong arms holding me fast. I could hardly say “good morning” to him without remembering the feeling. My face flushed at the barest eye contact. To prevent Watson from seeing what he had awakened in me, I had decided to avoid him at all costs. I lived with the man.

This simply would not do. It would be one thing if I had even a ghost of a chance with him, but it had become clear to me in the time I had known Watson that he was not a lover of men. I have known inverts of all sorts during the course of my work, including the meat-and-potatoes sort of upright Englishman one would hardly suspect. But since I had started to wonder about Watson’s desires, I had taken note of his interactions with other men, and never once did I notice a smirk or quip or gaze out of place. Sure, he admired the physical beauty of men and women alike in his chronicles of our adventures, but these were the same chronicles in which he’d invented an engagement with Ms. Johnston—”Ms. Morstan” in his account. No, his stories could hardly be trusted as a gauge of Watson’s true experience of events.

With no hope of return for my regard, my only possible future was one of disguised pining for my dear partner and friend. I did not relish the prospect.

An idea began to take hold in my mind: supposing I did not really love Watson, but simply valued his friendship and his touch separately. As I have said, I had not been touched so intimately since university, and at the time it seemed entirely possible that I merely craved touch itself, and not the whole of my dear Watson. If this were so, then I could contrive a way to live with him and bear his company. I would seek men’s touch elsewhere, and feel once again merely a friendly regard for my dear companion. It was with this glad conclusion that I leapt to my feet, muttered a hasty farewell, and set off into the night.

* * *

He was charming, not military but with an upright bearing that put me in mind of a general. A baronet with a strict father, from that posture combined with the cut of his waistcoat and the enunciation of his Ts. I picked him out the instant I set foot in the club, for his grin and his swagger told of a keenness perhaps too intent for this sort of club. If I could interest him, he would be an easier catch than anyone else here, though he would hold to club rules and remain discreet. 

I caught his eye and nodded slightly to a table, where he sat with me and we talked of nothing over whiskeys we had ordered more as props than libations. It was clear that we had little in common but our desire, but from the way he kept touching my hand, he did not seem to mind.

Soon enough we retired to his rooms in one of the club’s upper floors, where he pressed me against the inside of his door and kissed me thoroughly. I couldn’t deny the sense of release that came as he pinned my shoulders to the door, the utter joy that came from running my hands up and down his back.

But as his hands ran through my hair and his mouth trailed kisses and bites down my neck, I found that all I could think about was my dear Watson—what would his hands feel like doing this? What would it feel like for his leg to come between mine, his thigh pressing suggestively against me? 

As the initial relief of the touch abated, I began to feel a growing discomfort. I wanted to hold someone, to show my love through embrace and feel it reflected back, but not with this anonymous stranger. Not with anyone else but my own dear Watson. I could not keep holding this aliased so-and-so as if I cared a jot about him. It simply felt wrong.

He felt me tense up, and pulled back to peer at me.

“I’m sorry,” I replied to his unasked question, “I thought this was what I needed, but—I can’t.”

He released me and moved back, giving me space to button up my waistcoat again and re-tie my tie.

“I understand,” he said as he raked a hand through his fine, blond hair, “I was like that for a while too after my partner passed.” He smiled sadly. “I hope you find closure sooner rather than later.”

I smiled my gratitude and nodded a goodbye before dashing out of his room, out of the club, and back onto the street. I caught my breath against a building as I began to process what had just happened. Well! It seemed that I was not merely touch-starved after all.

* * *

I took the long way home, hoping that having more time to think would help me come up with a solution. As I strolled through gaslit streets and moonlit alleyways, I barely noticed the evidence of crimes-in-the-making that littered the city. My mind could only replay the conspiratorial smile Watson so often favored me with, and his delighted gasp when I revealed an unexpected theory about a case, and the overblown concern in his eyes whenever I so much as scraped my knee. Blast it all, he cared for me (if not in the way I wanted). I could not move out suddenly, or refuse to take him with me on cases, or keep such odd hours as to avoid him. He would worry about me, as he already did whenever given even the most meager cause.

But I would be a fool to think it was anything other than the devotion of a true friend.  _ Remember his fictional Ms. Morstan! _ I thought. My friend might like the idea of romance, but all evidence showed that the idea was enough for him.

My mood was getting worse as I approached 221B. The more I thought about the situation, the more impossible it seemed to be. I could not act normally around my dear friend now that my love had been made plain to me, but neither could I hurt him by growing distant. At last, I climbed the stairs with a heavy heart, glad at least that the lateness of the hour would prevent me having to deal with the problem until the next day. 

Until I saw light beneath the door as I reached the landing. I must have missed the light in the window, so deep was I in my brooding. I determined that my best course of action now would be to affect a sort of detached politeness until I could get to bed and hopefully think of a better way to address the situation.

  
  


W

I was nodding into my writing somewhat by the time I heard his step on the stairs, but found time to collect myself as I heard the creak of him pausing halfway up. My heart sped up as I heard his footsteps resume, and at last the door opened on my friend, looking somewhat tousled.

Words caught in my throat as he looked past me and barely nodded in greeting before hanging up his coat. 

“Holmes, are you alright?” I managed, noting the exhausted set of his face and what appeared to be a rash peeking out over the top of his collar. This had to be an odd case indeed—a mysterious illness? Or a plant-based irritant, perhaps? But as I stood and moved toward him, my hand reaching toward his collar, Holmes took a step back and flushed. Drat!

“I am quite all right, thank you. The case is not the sort on which you would want to join me. Good night.” And with these mysterious words, he all but ran to his bedroom.

As I set my desk to rights and put out the fire, I reflected on Holmes’ flustered words and odd appearance. Normally, he came to me with any sort of medical question or ailment. Just as he had no shame in touching me, he likewise seemed to have no qualms about baring himself before me, literally and with frank descriptions of medical concerns. Perhaps that too had changed with his new touch-aversion?

I mulled this over as I put the rest of the flat to bed, and at last, as I put out the last lamp, it hit me: the rash on Holmes’ neck had been a love-bite! That was why he had kept away from me recently. That was why he had been so reluctant to remain in my company upon his return. He did not want me to know, but he had a paramour. 

I stood there in the darkness a long while, my earlier sleepiness banished. Though Holmes had often spoken ill of love, I now realized that some small part of me had hoped that our close bond could change his mind. That, through good conversation and quiet patience, I could show him the beauty of giving one’s heart to another. And now it was evident that he knew all about the beauty of love, and had simply not been interested in  _ me _ . Perhaps all the balderdash about romance being beneath him had been Holmes’ gentle way of discouraging my affections—I would not put it past such a gentleman and dear friend.

My leg was starting to ache from standing so long in the cold room, and so at last I decided to quit the sitting room and go to bed.

* * *

I slept fitfully, but just before awakening I had the most splendid dream. The sun shone gold through the window, casting warmth on me and on Holmes beside me. He was splayed out comfortably, awake but content to lounge with me, one hand coming up to run protectively down my side. In that instant, I knew that he loved me, knew that there was nowhere he would rather be than with me, always. And then he patted my shoulder gently and rose, telling me some perfectly acceptable reason why he had to leave, and I felt so bereft that I awoke to my cold and empty bed.

I sat up and looked out the window. Dawn was just beginning to filter through the trees outside, and I almost considered going back to sleep to try to reclaim that feeling of Holmes next to me. But some part of me knew that the dream was over and would not return. My bedroom became a blur as tears filled my eyes. Well, and so what if Holmes had found love somewhere else? I should have known that my broken body and meager intellect were not enough to tempt him.

I shook myself. I had learned that it was pointless to rage against a problem I could not fix. My insecurity about my relationship with Holmes should not endanger the work I was doing to accept the body I now had to live in. I decided that I would read until breakfast. Perhaps with something to do, I would not dwell on whatever was happening with my detective.

  
  


H

I was unused to coming down to breakfast fully dressed, but I could see no alternative as I shaved the next morning. The anonymous baronet had left marks all up and down my neck during our brief exchange, and if Watson had been puzzled by them the night before, he would certainly make his conclusions if I put them on full view this morning.

When at last I made my way down to breakfast, I saw that my care in choosing my highest collar had been for naught: the quirk of Watson’s eyebrow posed his question even before he opened his mouth.

“Good morning, Holmes,” he began, “and I believe, congratulations?”

“You saw them last night, then,” I returned, as I sat down at the table.

“Them?” His eyes wandered to my collar. “And here I thought it was only the one. Dear me, for a man who speaks so disparagingly of romance—”

“—I can assure you, Watson, that there was no romance involved.” Drat. Not what I had meant to say at all.

At this, he faltered, and I realised that his smirking bravado had been an act. But to what purpose?

“Holmes, I believe you wrote a monograph on the incipient signs of venereal disease…” he began, and I waited to see how he would finish his point delicately over breakfast. His look was significant—and, from the furrow in his brow, worried.

I tried for assurance. “You need not worry on my account—”

“—When you up and leave in the middle of our evening without a word to me of where you’re going, and return, disheveled, in the wee hours?” I could tell that he was trying to keep his voice light and even, but his face was flushed up to the golden roots of his hair, and he held his fork so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

“I have gone to pursue a case without word to you numerous times since our acquaintance— _ our _ evening?”

“And do you suppose that I didn’t worry after you all of those times as well? Yes,  _ our  _ evening, in which we spent quiet time together and enjoyed each other’s company, which seems to be rather a rare occurrence as of late.”

“A rare occurrence? I spent all day with you yesterday—”

“—And could hardly meet my eye.”

I met his eye now, and felt something wilt within me at his stricken gaze. I reached across the table to grip his shoulder comfortingly out of sheer force of habit, the muscle memory speaking where I could not find the words. Drat again! I had meant to stop being so forward in my affection.

He leaned into the touch, his eyes falling closed and his face instantly relaxing. 

Interesting. I stroked his shoulder gingerly, tracing light circles on the seam of his jacket.

“Watson,” I began, my voice catching a bit. He looked up at me with pleading eyes. I cleared my throat.

“Perhaps you had better join me at the settee.”

W

There had to be only one way to interpret this. Holmes  _ did _ want to look me in the eye, he  _ did _ want to touch me, and in his hesitation I saw—I hoped—that he wanted even more.

No sooner had we sat down next to each other on the settee than he leaped up from beside me and bounded to the door to lock it. I am known to come to the wrong conclusion even when given the complete data, but I could not for the life of me think of an explanation for that action that did not accord with my hopes at the breakfast table. So it was that, when he sat down once more beside me, I took his hands in both my own. 

“I hope I do not misunderstand,” I began, looking down at his hands and then up into his gray eyes. He laced his fingers with my own.

“No,” he murmured, “I think you understand perfectly.” A flush was forming about his pale cheeks.

He looked down at our hands, suddenly bashful. “Last night, I had the opportunity to confirm a suspicion I had about the nature of my regard for you.”

“And you confirmed it by attaining these?” I lifted a hand to rest at his collar, a higher one no doubt chosen to conceal the red marks I had seen a bit of the night before. He tensed at my touch, but did not move away.

“I have made a point to casually touch you often, so that you feel appreciated despite my regular habit of putting my foot in it.” Here, he raised a hand to prevent me from politely (if untruthfully) denying his words.

He continued: “I realized, on that night on Carr Street, that casual contact was not enough for me. That I wanted you to hold me like that even when I was not in danger of scraping my knee on the cobblestones, and that you were not the sort of man I could ask for something like that.”

Here, I pulled him to me, at first in an awkward sideways embrace. He pushed me to the corner of the settee so he could lie mostly on top of me, his arms wrapped around me and his head buried in the crook of my neck.

I wrapped my arms tightly around him. “And now you know I am the sort of man you could ask for something like this. However did you miss it, O Great Detective?”

He sighed in contentment against my ear. “You were never anything but a gentleman to anyone we ran across, no matter how attractive you claimed them to be in your accounts of our adventures. How could I make any inference about where your attractions lay?”

As if I could flirt with anyone when  _ he _ was in the room. “Why, they lay with you the whole time, of course, and so I had no thought of wooing anyone else.”

He looked up at me then, from my shoulder where he had been hiding his face, with a curious expression. I could feel his breath on my lips, and I ached to kiss him, but I wondered if he was still too shocked to much enjoy it. 

“You must know, dear Watson, that I only sought alternative company last night because I believed your regard for me to be impossible. And that I could not be satisfied with that company because of how thoroughly besotted I am with you. And that you are the only man for me. And—”

And he looked like he had a very many other grave declarations to make, but I could not tolerate any more self-effacement from my famously arrogant detective, and so I tangled a hand in his soft curls and brought his lips to mine.

  
  


H

For all my urgent disclosures, Watson’s lips told even truer of an undying devotion, of a frantic passion and a sure love. Kissing him was discovery. He started slow and chaste and gentle, gauging my interest and my experience, and then deepened the kiss as I cupped his jaw and moaned into him. His moustache tickled my face as his tongue swept between my lips and I shivered at the intimacy of it all.

After long moments of discovering the inside of his mouth, I had to pull away to breathe, and then of course to gaze into his eyes.

“I love you,” he said, redundantly, as he held me in his warm embrace. I kissed him again.


End file.
